Valve details Dota 2’s Shanghai Major

This week, in Esports news, Valve have offered up a few more details on Dota 2‘s forthcoming Shanghai Major.

We already knew a bit about it – that it’ll take place in Shanghai between 2 March and 6 March of 2016, that it’s hosted by Perfect World, and that it’ll be in the Mercedes-Benz Arena – but the latest Dota 2 blog post offers a little bit more. The prize pool will be a cool $3,000,000 USD, for one thing. For another, the Open Qualifiers will take place between 3 January and 6 January, with the Regional Qualifiers happening directly after that between 7 January and 10 January.

Team registration opens on 18 December 2015, if you fancy your chances. If your fancies are more towards attending as a spectator rather than a competitor, more information on tickets will “be available soon.” As this is Valve, “soon” could actually stretch to sometime after the Major is already over, but that seems a bit unlikely.

And, in case you’ve forgotten, a new patch is due out “mid-December.” Should be a big ‘un, considering 6.85 was considered a smaller, stopgap patch between TI5 and the Frankfurt Major.

I’m a little curious as to when the third Dota 2 Major is going to take place, though, if it’s going to happen before The International 2016 (which will be the fourth Major). The Frankfurt Major was November 2015, the Shanghai Major is March 2016, and The International 2016 will likely be around August 2016, which means the unannounced third Major will probably have to be around June 2016 – or possibly even earlier, to give teams as long as possible to prepare for TI6.